United States: Busting The Top Privacy Myths

Those who think that privacy is dead these days might want to
drop by the Walter Washington Convention Center in early March, for
the International Association of Privacy
Professionals' Global Privacy Summit in Washington, D.C.
IAPP's membership, and attendance at its programs, have
exploded in the last few years, as professionals have recognized
the growing importance of rules and expectations about privacy
— more specifically, about the collection, use and transfer
of data.

But many misunderstandings persist about privacy. That's one
reason that Future of Privacy Forum has attempted to bring good,
solid thinking about privacy values and expectations to
policymakers' attention. In connection with IAPP's Global
Privacy Summit, Future of Privacy Forum will be releasing a set of
"top privacy papers" that it believes can
help guide privacy policymakers and professionals in the right
direction.

One of these papers, by Neil Richards, a law professor and leading
privacy scholar, describes and debunks "Four Privacy Myths." The myths —
that privacy is dead, people don't care about privacy, we
shouldn't have things to hide, and privacy rules are bad for
business — are inhibiting rational discussion and
problem-solving, Richards contends.

Richards believes that if we really confront and overcome these
myths, we'll be better able to pick the right path with respect
to privacy law — which, he notes, concerns "the rules we
have as a society for managing the collection, use and disclosure
of personal information."

Let's look at each of Richards' four myths, and his
explanations of why they're not true.

"Privacy is Dead." It's a great
sound bite, and a lot of big names in the tech world have endorsed
this myth. But new digital technologies haven't threatened much
of what we consider to be private. "We still put locks on our
houses, we still wear clothes, and we still use doors to keep the
general public out of our bathroom and bedroom." Similarly,
we're generally protected from unreasonable seizures, and we
treat ordinary private communications confidentially.

What about digital data — isn't privacy dead there? Not
at all, Richards says, noting the vibrancy of the
debate on data privacy: "if we think about privacy as the
question of what rules should govern the use of personal
information, then privacy has never been more alive." He also
notes that even while Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg proclaims
the end of the age of privacy, his company maintains tight
confidentiality over its operations. If, as Richard states,
"Privacy is the shorthand we have come to use to identify
information rules," it is certainly not dead.

"People don't care about
privacy." This myth seems particularly strong with
young people, who are said to have a whole different attitude. But
again, Richards points to evidence that all people want to have
some control over how their personal information is collected and
used. Young people just seem less concerned about privacy from
their peers and more about privacy from the perceived authority
figures in their lives. For older people, the myth may be based on
their failing to adjust all of their technological privacy settings
— but that failure tells more about the
"bewildering" nature of those settings than their real
interests.

"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to
fear." This myth, Richards says, "frames the
question of privacy in ways that ignore the reasons why privacy
matters." Of course everyone wants some aspects of their lives
private. Intellectual activities in particular — what books
we read, what movies we watch — need a degree of privacy in
order to promote broad and free thinking. People who fear that
their intellectual activities are being watched, Richards says,
"will restrict themselves to the mainstream, the conventional,
and the boring." If we care about a vibrant public debate, he
says, we must care about this intellectual privacy right, which
benefits both individuals and society.

"Privacy is bad for business." This
final myth, Richards notes, is often a last resort argument by
those skeptical of the need for new or clarified privacy rules for
the digital age. The argument is that privacy gets in the way of
technological innovation. But he argues that the contrary is true:
Businesses that succeed at using personal data often depend on the
trust of those who supply personal data, and that trust requires
reliable and trustworthy rules and expectations about the proper
limits on collection, use and transfer of information.

Facebook, for example, was valued at $104 billion in its initial
public offering, when "its only real assets were its users,
their data, and their eyeballs as viewers of advertising."
Such valuations underscore "the importance of trust in the
digital environment." And some studies by other privacy
scholars similarly suggest that the presence of privacy controls in
computer interfaces "makes individuals more likely to share
their personal information."

Each of Richard's busted myths arguments, of course, lead to
the conclusion that privacy policymaking can't be avoided. They
also highlight the fact that privacy rules for the digital age will
be so important to all of us, so they need to be carefully worked
out, with attention focused less on general terms like
"privacy" and more on how, in real-life situations, our
new information-gathering protocols will work.

We've faced "privacy panics" before, Richards
says. When photography and other new tools shined the light of
publicity on elites 120 years ago, privacy law began to develop to
protect against intrusions and embarrassing disclosures. When data
banks began in the 1960s, statutory protections were enacted, and
courts began expanding privacy rights. The new digital environment
simply presents a new case of "new technologies and social
practices threatening established social norms about how
information could be used."

With the help of Future of Privacy Forum, the thousands of IAPP
members, and policymakers willing to eschew simplistic privacy
myths, new and appropriate norms will be eventually established to
meet today's "privacy panic."

For further information, I highly recommend all of Professor
Richards' writings on privacy, including his new book,
published by Oxford this month, "Intellectual Privacy: Rethinking Civil Liberties
in the Digital Age." Professor Richards, a former law
clerk to the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, is a professor
at Washington University School of Law (where I am an adjunct
professor).

The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.

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